Key facts
- Alphabet's stock fell 6% after announcing AI leadership changes.
- Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to become Chief Scientist at Alphabet.
- Jeff Dean is leaving Google to co-found a new AI startup called Discovery Loop.
- Discovery Loop aims to accelerate scientific research using AI.
- Koray Kavukcuoglu will lead DeepMind's day-to-day operations.
Alphabet's stock declined 6% following a significant restructuring of its AI division and the departure of several key researchers. Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of DeepMind, is transitioning from CEO to Chief Scientist at Alphabet, focusing on oversight and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Koray Kavukcuoglu will assume day-to-day leadership of DeepMind, reporting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Concurrently, Jeff Dean, a long-serving and influential Google executive, is leaving to co-found a new AI startup named Discovery Loop. He is joined by fellow researchers Quoc Le, Oriol Vinyals, and Sanjay Ghemawat. Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation, aims to accelerate scientific discovery by automating experimental loops using advanced AI systems. The company has received initial funding from Alphabet, Radical Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.
These departures follow a trend of AI talent leaving Google, with others joining rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. The shakeup occurs amid increased competition in the generative AI space and questions about the pace of Google's AI model development compared to competitors.